The Team:

Nikki Juen

Co-Director

Nikki Juen is an artist, designer and educator interested in the spaces where these practices overlap. As a founding faculty member of the MFA in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts her research focuses on the body as media as well as the contemplative mind in higher education. She is a lecturer and critic in the Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies at Rhode Island School of Design. Her classes, workshops and mentorships explore the development of the individual through the cultural roles of art and design in society. With over two decades of experience as a mentor and advisor, she helps non-profits, institutions and individuals develop attentive and holistic understanding of their intention, function and efficacy. Juen recently spoke to 200 designers in Chicago on International Women’s Day as part of the American Institute of Graphic Arts initiative, Women in Design: Leading with Intent and Integrity.

Andrea Lauer

Co-Director + Founding Team Member

Andrea Lauer is an award-winning costume designer and artist as well as the founder of Risen From The Thread. She is also a 2017 MIT Director's Fellow. She has technical expertise in sensors, electronics and material science, that she uses for wearable product design and experiential art installations. Recent credits include Broadway’s Bring It On, American Idiot (Broadway and touring productions), Brooklynite, What’s It’s All About, Murder for Two, STREB’s: Forces and the London Cultural Olympics, in addition to several other theatrical, dance, and opera productions in New York City and Internationally. Also working as a stylist for various artists, commercials, and publications, her work can be seen in Rolling Stone, Vogue, Interview, OUT Magazine, The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, The Tony Awards, red carpet events, and music videos.

Sarah Sandman

Co-Director + Founding Team Member

Sarah Sandman is an Brooklyn-based artist and designer creating experiences that amplify messages of social change. Sandman is a 2017 Senior TED Fellow and holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sandman’s other work includes the Gift Cycle, in which she helped neighboring U.S. communities exchange gifts of art during a cross country cycling journey. Sandman created and facilitated Hostos Hands Up, a collaboration between Hostos Community College's Black Studies program and Media Design program to design protest signs for the NYC Millions March. Their work was displayed at Smack Mellon's Respond exhibit and is currently on display at the Museum of the City of New York.

Joey Foster Ellis

Producer and Creative Strategist + Founding Team Member

Joey Foster Ellis (Jumpsuit Producer) is an artist and TED Fellow living in Kathmandu. He has received several site-specific commissions, including Greenpeace, Bank of America, Chevron and Manulife and his work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. Ellis was selected by The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum as one of 40 Under 40, a major exhibition highlighting the work of forty artists born since 1972.

Kyra Gaunt

Creative Strategist + Founding Team Member

Kyra D. Gaunt is a TED Fellow and singer-songwriter versed in classical music, jazz and R&B songwriting, an adjunct associate professor of ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology and sociology and as a social media expert. Gaunt is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Baruch College and Hunter College at the City University of New York. She as a black feminist ethnomusicologist specializing in the study and performance of musical blackness and digital ethnography on YouTube. Her next book is a digital ethnography of black girls’ twerking and music-related videos on YouTube. This digital work expands on her previous scholarshipThe Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, which won the Alan Merriam Prize for the most outstanding English-speaking monograph awarded by the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) in 2007.

Katy Kirby

Producer and Documentarian

Katy Kirby is (in no particular order) a community builder, documentarian, digital marketer, music technology advocate, film nerd, swiss army knife and creative instigator. With fifteen years experience in the entertainment industry and over twelve years working in interactive and experiential marketing, she has worked behind the scenes with several nationally recognized brands and companies such as Live Nation, The Daily Show, Associated Press Television, Pepsi, General Motors, and Sony. As one of the most seasoned social media marketers in the music space, she’s spoken on panels at SXSW (Music), Americana Music Conference, A2iM, and Leadership Bluegrass concerning digital media trends and best practices and how they relate to music consumers and artists. A native New Yorker, Kirby recently relocated back to the New York City area from Nashville, where she continues to consult with music and digital start-up companies.@katsuzak

Edisa Weeks

Choreographer

Choreographer Edisa Weeks formed DELIRIOUS Dances in 2003 to empower people through the immediacy of dance. Weeks creates mixed media interactive work in intimate environments. Her work has been performed in a variety of venues including The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, chashama arts, The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Emory University, Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, Harlem Stage, The Kennedy Center, The Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, The Mermaid Parade, The National Black Arts Festival, and Summerstages Dance Festival, as well as in storefront windows, senior centers, sidewalks and living rooms, including living rooms in Berlin, Germany, as part of Haus der Kulturen der Welts 50th anniversary celebration. Weeks teaches technique, improvisation and choreography at Queens College. She is developing Three Rites: Life, Liberty, Happiness, which integrates live music, dance, text and a visual installation to examine how America has promoted, protected, personified and pursued life, liberty and happiness. www.deliriousdances.com

Angel Chinn

Choreographer

Angel Chinn studied dance at Morgan State University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County where she received a BA in dance and performance. She performed around the DC metropolitan area with Shange Dance Productions from 2006-2009 and Baltimore Dance Project from 2007-2013. Angel is currently a teaching artist at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School and is the artistic director of NonaLee Dance Theatre. She has worked with choreographers Scott Rink, Lindsey Dietz Marchent, Kathleen Fisher, Mark Dendy, Candace Franklin, Nathan Trice, and Edisa Weeks. nonaleedt.org